There is no geographical definition of the neighbourhood despite it being the chosen spatial scale for U.K. government policy tackling social injustice and rebuilding democracy, and the setting for the majority of life’s experiences where an individual’s lifelong welfare is largely determined. Consequently, resources are targeted sub-optimally with environmental and social dynamics largely undiagnosed. This has fuelled an urgent demand for revealing the nature of neighbourhoods, and how they can be identified on the ground and delineated on maps. Implementing a positive methodology I build upon the foremost theoretically-supported pedestrian-street network neighbourhood model, harnessing established theory, and present an integrative geographical theory of the neighbourhood and its practical manifestation to address the research problem. Using Grannis's empirical work as a benchmark I test the transferability of his methodology to the UK and the explanatory power of my housing area neighbourhood model, using correlation analysis, in two London case study areas, with positive results. Housing areas arise from the physical and built environments and are shown to explain social distributions better than other spatial units tested, and compare favourably with applied surrogate neighbourhoods. I then identify the datasets required to roll out the methodology for developing a practical, meaningful and bounded neighbourhood geography. Further analysis confirms the role of wealth as the great social and spatial segregator. The neighbourhood is re-conceptualised as an holistic and commonly understood entity, whilst the spatial precision introduced facilitates measurement and assessment for optimal service and resource provision, as well as monitoring and intervention. Presenting structural and social homophily as the geneses of social interaction patterns and the explanation for how space is transformed into place is a paradigm shift in our understanding of this fundamental geographical concept which promises to stimulate additional theoretical substantiation and development whilst providing a framework for phenomenological and ethnographical approaches.

The aim of the thesis is to clarify the meaning of sustainable development by addressing the underlying causalities of sustainability issues - urban social sustainability. This thesis redefines sustainable development as a fundamental interdependency between people's life-chances and their environments. This requires a distinction between the external physical aspect, and the internal social aspect of sustainability. The former is mainly concerned with the interrelationship between the natural environment and human society as a whole; the latter is particularly concerned with the interrelationship between the created environment and individual life-chances. By virtue of the origins and the consequences of sustainability issues, this thesis argues that a proper conception of sustainable development should recover the human scale of development. A socially unsustainable society will inevitably increase exploitation of the natural environment. In other words, to achieve physical sustainability must achieve social sustainability first. Accordingly, the purpose here is to explore the practical meanings of urban social sustainability. Having argued that the expanding logic, and the utilitarian tendency of industrial capitalism, is the underlying cause of the current unsustainable trends, this thesis is mainly concerned with the time-space relations between productive and reproductive activities in a capitalist industrial society. Based on the theory of structuration, the key to understanding the internal social aspects of sustainability is the concept of 'duality'. Individual actions and social structures are not two given sets of entities, a dualism, but represent a duality: the created environment is both the medium, and the constantly reproduced outcome of individual actions. Based on this conceptual framework, the empirical analysis of the concept of urban social sustainability is focused on the time-space connections of the 'institutional webs' in relation to employment, housing, retailing and transport in a concrete urban context - London. It stresses the necessary time-space co-ordination of everyday household life and institutional structures in London. While acknowledging that an integrated, holistic approach to a socially sustainable city is desperately necessary, this thesis concludes that a simple, singular prescription of 'spatial integration' within the existing urban boundaries is inadequate. Rather, what is needed is to place the debate of sustainable cities in a wider regional, and, most importantly, social context, through which the time-space connections between everyday life and institutional structures are more likely to be adequately channelled. Moreover, the stress of households, not individuals, as the links between different institutions also opens up a fresh research scope for urban policy and strategic planning.

The research explores the incorporation of the concept of sustainable development in UK land use planning policy through an in-depth case study of the planning policy formulation process in the London Borough of Southwark (LBS). The thesis questions the notion of a formal policy cascade as a standardised and therefore neutral influence. It seeks to look beyond the written guidance to investigate the influence of the informal within the formal plan making process. Adopting a New Institutional perspective of the formal and informal, stable and dynamic, strategic and norm-governed dimensions of institutions (Lowndes 1997), the research examines how sustainable development is interpreted and enters established local planning policy. The context of the research in an arena of emerging local governance is explored with particular reference to local managerial and participatory governance as applied to planning policy formulation. The research employs qualitative techniques using documentary and content analysis, semi-structured interviews and observation. The research concludes that during the LBS plan making process, the incorporation of sustainable development in planning policy became eroded by a combination of inter-related formal institutional and political forces. The argument is made that strong interpretations of sustainable development were able to appear through the informal personal and professional influence of local planning officers. The research concludes that the New Institutional perspective adopted offers a useful way of understanding the complexity of introducing new concepts such as sustainable development into established institutions. Recommendations for enhancing the theoretical framework and for further research are made.

In an urban context characterised by concentrated and persistent deprivation there has been a history of policy intervention albeit with limited impact. Michael Porter's US inspired City Growth Strategy (CGS) initiative presented an alternative approach to urban economic regeneration within the UK characterised by a focus on the competitive advantages of deprived urban areas and a leading role for the private sector within the policy making process. This thesis investigates the implementation of the City Growth Strategy in two areas of London (Haringey and the City Fringe) to explore wider issues of economic competitiveness and governance in relation to deprived urban areas. Drawing upon a range of institutional, regulationist and policy networks theoretical perspectives, this research adopted a case study qualitative approach based on a number of face-to-face interviews. An evaluation process based on implementation theory was used to unpack the differences between theory, policy and practice with an emphasis on uncovering policy-making processes. The study found that the application of Porter's vision in the UK context displays a number of weaknesses rooted both in its conceptualisation of the problems of deprived urban areas and the nature of its implementation. The emphasis upon the competitive advantages of deprived urban areas largely failed to translate into effective interventions due to problems of operationalising cluster policy locally, a lack of appreciation of the social dimension to urban problems and the particularities of the UK context. Private sector engagement has remained weak, although with notable exceptions in certain sectors and contexts, constrained by the limited local interaction with the public sector and wider issues related to the continued dominance of the central state in setting and funding the policy agenda. Implications from these fìndings are discussed including the need to think more precisely about différent types and styles of private sector involvement.

This thesis presents a street network and built form analysis of the urbanisation of four peripheral areas of London as they transformed from satellite settlements to parts of the continuous urban fabric of London over 130 years. The analysis is carried out by applying and combining space syntax and GIS techniques to chart the changing structures of network centrality through time, and how this relates to the built form, as they co-evolved. Through these methods an understanding of the factors that have contributed to the current spatial form of the case studies is developed. In taking an historical view of the urbanisation of the fringes of the London this thesis unpacks the spatial characteristics of areas characterised as ‘suburban’, revealing the specific spatial and architectural forms they have developed. It is shown that peripheral areas cannot be characterised as generically suburban and great variation exists within this simplistic categorisation. The development of transport infrastructures based around motor vehicles are shown to be reflected in the transformation of built form, both at the household and community level, illustrating the interdependence of technological development, regional planning regimes and every- day life. Large-scale transport infrastructures that operate at a regional level are shown to have local impacts whilst local changes are shown to have cumulative effects that transform the spatial character of large areas. The analysis of the historical patterns and stages of urbanisation allow new insights into the contemporary city to be developed that are explicitly aware of the role of historical processes in shaping the spaces of the contemporary city and the environments that we experience today. It also enables questions about future adaptability to be approached with a better understanding of the emergence and evolution of peri-urban areas.

This thesis investigates how objectives of integrating urban planning, city design and transport policies have been pursued in key case study cities as part of a compact city agenda since the early 1990s. Focusing on the underlying institutional arrangements, it examines how urban policymakers, professionals and stakeholders have worked across disciplinary silos, geographic scales and different time horizons to facilitate more compact and connected urban development. The thesis draws on empirical evidence from two critical cases, London and Berlin, established through a mixed method approach of expert interviews, examination of policy and planning documents, and review of key literature. Four main groups of integration mechanisms were identified and analysed: those related to (1) governance structures, (2) processes of planning and policymaking, (3) more specific instruments, and (4) enabling conditions. Based on having identified converging trends as part of the institutional changes that facilitated planning and policy integration in the case study cities, this thesis presents three main findings. First, rather than building on either more hierarchical or networked forms of integration, integrative outcomes are linked to a hybrid model of integration that combines hierarchy and networks. Second, while institutional change itself can lead to greater integration, continuous adjustment of related mechanisms is more effective in achieving this than disruptive, one-off ‘integration fixes’. Third, integrated governance facilitating compact urban growth represents a form of privileged integration, which centrally involves and even relies on the prioritisation of certain links between sectoral policy and geographic scales over others. Integrating urban planning, city design and transport policy at the city and metropolitan level, this thesis concludes, is essentially a prioritisation, which the compact city model implies and helps to justify.